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Column: Give Grossman a chance

It’s time for the Bears to give Rex Grossman a chance to show what he can do.

He can’t be any worse than Kyle Orton.

Sure, the Bears have an eight-game winning streak, a 9-3 record and a first-round bye if the playoffs started today with Orton at the helm. But somebody else is steering this ship. Namely, the Chicago Bears defense.

And they’ve done this despite poor quarterback play. Orton’s not even an average quarterback at this point in his career. He’s a poor one.

Orton has a quarterback rating of 60.2. That’s lower than Joey Harrington’s rating, somebody you never want to be compared to, especially in a worse than since. In fact he has the second-worst quarterback rating in the NFL, with only San Francisco’s Alex Smith doing worse.

He has a completion percent of 53.4 percent, a stat made worse by the number of simple, short throws he’s asked to make. And he’s fumbled the ball 11 times out of 23 sacks. A few sacks from an opposing defense could turn the tide in a future game quicker than the Florida Marlins could trade their soul to the devil for two minor league pitchers.

And Orton is only getting worse. He was 6-for-17 with 68 yards against Green Bay, a team that gave up 336 yards and three touchdowns to the mediocre Trent Dilfer. That’s right. Orton’s not even as good as Trent Dilfer.

He’s only passed for over 150 yards once this season, and that was against Detroit and its hula hoop defense, hardly an incredible task.

Orton overthrows most of his passes, misses receivers and does not make plays when he needs to. The Bears started five of their 13 drives in the Packer’s side of the field last Sunday, and he wasn’t able to engineer any touchdown drives.

It’s time for a change at quarterback.

It would be almost unethical not to give this superhuman defense a good shot at winning the Super Bowl. And the Bears are going to have to improve offensively if they want to win a Super Bowl.

At the moment, the status quo could get them to the NFC Championship Game. And they could even advance to the Super Bowl if they didn’t have to face Seattle. But the current Bears would not stand a chance against the likes of Indianapolis, Cincinnati or San Diego in a game with the offense in its currenting sputtering state. These teams will score on the Bears as Cincinnati showed earlier this year. And the Bears will need a few points to keep up.

Orton is not the type of quarterback at this point in his career that can do that.

Rex Grossman may not be either. But the Bears won’t know that for sure unless they test him out as soon as possible.

The Bears should let Grossman start the last three games after the Pittsburgh game, barring Kyle Orton somehow transforming into Tom Brady during the halftime show.

If Grossman doesn’t pan out, oh well. At least the Bears tried to give their Bears defense the best possible chance at a Super Bowl. But if he does improve the offense than say hello to a title chance.